Chilly Coffee
DAY 207 of connecting Statue of Liberty and Gateway Arch by Runyaking
July 11, 2023
Runyak DAY 207 will be Lacon to Chillicothe. Two towns on my watery path to St. Louis that I had to learn how to pronounce. Lacon, I learned from a local was an easy one, rhymes with Bacon. Chillicothe looks like a Native American word, by researching I was assured that my was assumption was correct. It’s pronounced Chi·luh·kaa·thee. In the Shawnee language it means “major town.” The original Chillicothe is in Ohio, it was a principal town for a band of Shawnee, but hardly a major town after Europeans settled. In researching I found that are are five Chillicothes in five different states. When being named, townspeople must have had hopes that one day their town would rival New York or Chicago. How’d that work out?
I arrived at Chillicothe’s public launch to start my run about 6:30 a.m. It would be an 8.7 mile run, not to where the kayaks were (Lacon Marina), but in Sparland, where yesterday I parked my van and ran to from Lacon Bridge, while pushing the bike.
During my run, because of a debacle, I was not wearing my Garmin Forerunner 245, as I normally do. In evenings, after a days runyaking, I always recharge the Forerunner. Last night I could not find the charger cord. I was sure I packed it, but now I couldn’t find it. Thank goodness I had brought a back up, a Garmin Forerunner 45. But, when I turned it on, it was deader than a doornail. I’m quite metrically oriented so I was very disturbed. I’d now have to use a phone gps app to record my runyaking for the rest of the trip. Arrgh.
Strava is the app I used. I’m not a fan at all, but it is the one most of my physically active friends use. So in dire times of ‘no Garmin’ that is my default app. But Garmin rules, Strava drools.
When the run ended, Kate was there to pick me up and drive the 16 mile detour caused by the bridge closure. We were able to start paddling just after 10 am.
First, I had to paddle back across the river to where DAY 206 ended: the touch paddle on the Sparland side of the closed Lacon Bridge.
Once where yesterday’s DAY 206 ended I started tracking my distance. The first mile of paddling took 21:48, and it never did get any faster as we moved toward Chillicothe. Anything over 20 min/mi I consider slow and today’s average was about 24 min/mi. At least today white caps weren’t seen, but winds were strong enough if viewed from shore, it looked as if the the river flowed the opposite direction.
The carp, I mean kopi, did not give us a break today. They continued jumping out of the water. Now that we are aware that it could happen at any moment, it does not freak us out as much. Which means my partner is now screaming less. I was getting more startled hearing Kate’s screams than when the kopi jumped near me.
Today two more kopi jumped into my kayak. The first was just a minnow.
When the third kopi jumped into Swiftee, I’d had enough. It was pretty cool the first time, yesterday. Now, in the audio of the video, I actually sounded I little disgusted. That’s because my clothing and my towels get a fishy odor. I have to double bag all fishy smelling items and isolate them from the rest of my dirty clothes, which I keep in a garbage bags. When I slept at night I placed the fishy bags outside the van.
When close to Chillicothe we passed under a trestle bridge and a train was crossing.
It was the same trestle I thought I might have to run over because of the Lacon Bridge closure. Thank goodness I found the touch paddle near Sparland on DAY 206, otherwise, I might have got trapped in the middle of trestle bridge by a train and had to jump into the river?
We landed at the Chillicothe public launch around 2:00 p.m. on a typical July afternoon, HOT. DAY 207 was over.
Chillicothe is only 20 minutes from a major Illinois city, Peoria. After retrieving Kate’s Suburban back in Lacon we headed to the big city.
The previous night (DAY 206) we had dinner at a restaurant that did not have beer. We were ready to make up for that tonight, in a trifecta manner. We went to three breweries. All three I can recommend. Trust my judgment, these three are my 1007th, 1008th and 1009th lifetime breweries. I can steer you to the good ones. The first was for beer and dinner, Obed and Isaac’s. It is in the renovated Second Presbyterian Church built in 1889.
The other two breweries were Rhodell and Bearded Owl. The one in the least impressive structure, Bearded Owl, we felt had the best beer. I found out many years ago, you can’t judge a beer by the facility it’s brewed in.
We again found a Walmart parking lot to camp at for the night. On the way there we found a venue that was having open mic. We listened for less than an hour. Seems Peoria has a pretty good music scene. When we return to the Illinois in October I’ll have to remember to bring my guitar.
Thanks for the update 👍🏻😊